Life-Cycle Hypothesis
by Halfpenny
Summary: Taja is reasonably certain that opening up a trading post in Zhu Zhin with a martial arts champion and an ex-bodyguard ranks only about a 3 on the list of stupid things she's done with her life. (In progress.)


_Takes place sometime during episode 3, where Kung Lao, Siro, and Taja have moved in together at the Trading Post and are learning new definitions of awkwardness. Rated for canon-typical violence and language._

* * *

 **Life-Cycle Hypothesis**

* * *

What it boiled down to was 'stay in the cell and live' or 'break out of the cell and die', which was what made decision in the end. Not because dying was preferable to living, but because it scared her – really more than just about anything else – that it'd ever become even a subconscious choice to suffer captivity just because it kept her alive.

She entertained herself during Kung Lao's rescue by thinking _I just saved a martial arts champion in my lingerie,_ and then everything in the room boiled over. Armed guards poured from the cracks while the baron's daughter pinned him into the corner with a staff; Taja caught a last glimpse of Kung Lao's dark hair before the guards were on them, and then it was all about trying to keep her own head on her neck, never mind his.

It was almost fun, in a riotous suicidal kind of way – brawling through the chamber, sneaking through the dungeons, dueling the possessed monks at the temple. She caught herself enjoying the fresh air as she buried a fist into a monk's nose, because even when she was fighting for her life, she liked to think she could appreciate the little things. Her own clothes on her back, the tools of her trade back in her hands. The night sky, full of all of the sparkling things she could never own but loved anyway.

Then Jen died in Kung Lao's arms, and Taja remembered, _right, this is the part where I get the hell out of here._

* * *

Siro raked her over the coals about stealing food from the monks the entire time he was stuffing his face with it. Weirdly, the fact that Kung Lao hadn't eaten anything from the stash pissed her off more. No reason for it exactly, except that she was tired and sore and anxious, and things were catching in her craw that usually slid right by her.

By afternoon she'd nearly snuck away half a dozen times. She'd had a good opportunity when Kung Lao had been off relieving himself and Siro had clambered up a nearby tree to try to see where they were headed, but she'd been too preoccupied chewing Siro out for swinging on the branches to remember that he was supposed to be someone else's problem. The time by the river had been even better, considering they'd been kind enough to leave their personal effects on the bank, but that time Taja had been sidetracked by the ugly array of deep bruises across Kung Lao's torso. By the time she realized she was staring, Siro had turned around and waved at her, and the moment had been lost.

 _I need to get rid of these idiots,_ was the most prevalent thought, but also _I need to find a new hunting ground._ She couldn't go back to the north, where her height gave her away, and she couldn't go to the south, where her hair gave her away. Back west was the roadblock of her reputation and east… who knew what was east. Probably nothing. Probably something, which was even worse.

 _Go._ She sat on the flattest rock she could find as Siro wandered off to look for berries, leaving her and a contemplative Kung Lao camped out by the river. It was shallower here, slower moving, infested with insects and weeds. Any moment a cloud of biting bugs would find her and maybe that would get her off her ass.

Taja flexed her sore feet and stacked up the pros and cons of leaving. Pros. Getting away from this parade of walking disasters. Striking out on her own again, setting her own pace, not having to answer to anyone, not having to share food. Cons. Not having any food to share anyway. Possibly giving up a good gig in Zhu Zhin. Giving up a chance to throw down some roots, uncover some good clientele.

After several minutes of turning it about she'd made up her mind. She would get to Zhu Zhin on her own, and on her own terms. Traveling by herself would mean watching her own back again, but that was nothing new, and ultimately it would invite less trouble. She'd be long gone before they figured her out. As long she didn't take anything too valuable, they wouldn't bother coming after her anyway.

Settled, Taja turned to Kung Lao, beginning to make her excuses. She stopped mid-word when she realized he was asleep.

She studied him doubtfully. Slumped against a rotten log, satchel across his lap, he looked less like a deadly warrior and more like a student who'd dozed off skipping school. The gnats from the river had found him and were now hovering gently around his head, moving erratically in the gleam of sunlight through the trees.

 _This_ was the man who was supposed to have won some mystical martial arts tournament? Taja wavered between disbelief and disgust. She could probably take the shirt off his back and tweak his nose for good measure before slipping out of camp.

So much for her elaborate escape plan. She slid off the rock, letting the ground give a little under her toes before she put her full weight down. She shouldered her pack soundlessly and scanned the area for Siro, but there remained no sight or sound of him. Satisfied, she made her way around her former perch and started back toward the roadway that led to Zhu Zhin.

She made it out exactly seven strides. Her feet weren't making any noise, but it wouldn't have mattered even if they were. The frogs were croaking up a storm in the grasses and the air was humming with the sounds of the forest: the roll of the river, the rustle of the canopy, the nonstop drone of insects. It was easy. Almost stupidly so.

Taja stared hard at the path in front of her. She firmed her grip around the strap of her satchel, laying it more evenly across her shoulder, and started off again.

She got ten more strides before she stopped again. She stood there for a long, long time, fuming, teeth grinding together. _Open road_ , long skies – long enough to disappear over the edge of the earth and wrap around again if that's what she wanted. Rain and wind and thunder and sun that she didn't have to share. The inevitable march of the seasons. The knowledge that every year she was only getting older, getting less lucky each time, getting closer to the noose with every breath she took.

Behind her, Kung Lao didn't stir.

Taja turned and retraced her steps. She hurled the satchel against the boulder, climbed up on it again, jerked her knees up, and commenced raking her fingers through her hair, shaking everything out her scalp stung and her hair frizzed.

Kung Lao didn't wake up until Siro tromped with a yell back into camp, covered in scratches and packing a blue-stained shit-eating grin. It was a miracle he'd brought any berries back with him at all, but Taja wasn't in the mood to appreciate miracles.

* * *

Their welcoming party at the Trading Post was a bevy of ninjas who hit her hard enough to make her teeth rattle in her head, and all she could think was _I deserve worse._ Dion would have belted her a long time ago for not keeping her neck off the chopping block. The fight that ensued was more enough to prove to her that she was stupid and Siro was crazy and Kung Lao…

There were a list of words to describe Kung Lao, but it'd been a long day and qualifying was beyond her. After making sure the rest of the Trading Post was cleared, they agreed to split ways and get some rest for the night. Siro vanished with the ease of someone who'd lived there half his life while Kung Lao ascended the stairs more slowly, tracing the grooves on the banister, finding stray marks in the walls like a blind man deciphering an old story.

Taja was left behind to sit on a bench in the midst of the destruction, wondering, not for the first time, _what the hell am I doing here._ Even abandoned and strewn with debris, the sheer height of the ceiling in the main floor alone spoke of opulence beyond her payroll. She kept expecting the baron's guards to turn up out of nowhere to kick her out, but then again, she supposed there wasn't a lot left here to protect. The baron's greatest treasure had been stolen, and even if he'd lived to mourn the loss, whatever fading memories were left in this winter bastion of his wouldn't be worth the price to preserve them.

She was so absorbed enough in her thoughts that she didn't notice Kung Lao until he was offering her the master suite. "What?" she said, just to make sure. She'd expected an invitation upon arrival a lot more like 'pick a corner and don't snore in it'.

"I figured you could use the featherbed after that beating you just took. Provided there's still feathers in it."

"Didn't you just go upstairs a minute ago?" Her _ribs._ They were something you never noticed until someone took a good shot at them. Then you figured out quickly that everything in the world was connected to them. Maybe even destiny.

"I couldn't sleep," Kung Lao said, once again hinting at either an untapped sense of humor or psychosis. "In all the confusion I'd forgotten you've never been here before. This place is bigger than it looks. I'll show you the way, if you'd like."

"You came back to give me a tour?" She would have laughed in his face if she hadn't been so tired. Also _ribs._ "You think this is my first time navigating a strange house?"

"No, but I'd guess it's your first time staying the night in one, and it's hard to make up a bed with broken ribs." His smile was tentative. "At least in my experience."

"They're not broken."

"Are you sure? You look like you're in pain."

"I can handle it."

"A physician might have something to help with it," Kung Lao said. "Zhu Zhin has a pretty active market at night. I could go out and see if any of the herbal shops are still open."

"I have stuff of my own. Look, I'm fine, okay?" Taja said. "I can make it on my own. Just go to bed. You're tired."

"I'm tired," Kung Lao echoed, and unexpectedly his eyes crinkled up in a slight smile. Before she knock it off his face he moved on. "I know this is still pretty new, but you're not alone anymore. At least let me check them for you to see if you're in any danger."

"So you're a martial arts champion _and_ a physician now?"

"I wear a lot of hats," Kung Lao said. "It'll only take a minute. Please."

Taja was on her way to refusing when she realized, very abruptly, that she'd hit her limit. Right there on the bench, a few feet or a few miles from bed, it was all the same. She continued to sit on the bench, cradling her ribs, leaning her head against the wall.

Kung Lao pulled up a stool and sat down on it in front of her. " _No_ ," she said.

"Taja—"

"They're not broken."

"What harm will it do to check?"

Taja didn't respond. Kung Lao waited her out, elbows on his knees, not making eye contact. Just sitting there like he could wait all night. He probably could. She didn't envy his future sleepless nights any more than she was looking forward to her own.

Realizing that this was a battle she was waging against herself, Taja finally gave in and loosened her arms. Without wasting a second, Kung Lao reached out and gently guided them out to her sides. She'd known it would hurt, but she'd underestimated just how much her torso would stiffen after the battle. She let out a startled, involuntary hiss when he touched his fingertips to the site, and he glanced up quickly at her face, frowning. "Just kidding," Taja said.

"_," Kung Lao said. His tone was deadpan but his touch had become businesslike, and a minute of inspection later he was reaching to pull up the hem of her shirt.

She yanked her arms back in. " _Hey._ "

"I just need to look at—"

"You can look _over_ the shirt. Or no deal."

Kung Lao let out a slow breath. Without comment, he started on the outside and worked his way in with light, expert pressure. Taja managed to keep still until he got halfway up her ribcage, then bit back a yelp when a thumb pressed down on a tender spot. Kung Lao made a sound in his throat, almost an apology, moving on with greater care.

After another long minute he finally eased back on his heels, letting out a slow breath. "I think you got lucky. Some deep bruising, but I don't think they're broken after all."

Taja wondered how it was she was supposed to react. She'd expected to feel relieved when he drew away, but the examination had been so unexpectedly soothing and respectful that she felt a strange twinge of disappointment when he broke contact. For the sake of emotional organization, she tried to remember the last time she'd been treated by a physician that wasn't being held at knifepoint by Dion. Maybe a time, very young, with parents she no longer remembered, but hypotheticals didn't count.

Aware that Kung Lao was expecting a response from her, Taja stalled for time by straightening her shirt. "Are you hurt anywhere else?" Kung Lao asked, far too gently, probably sensing her turmoil.

"Nope." It came out a little rough. She had to clear her throat. "Thanks."

"They'll be sore for a few weeks, but at least we've established you're not in any danger," Kung Lao said. "If they really bother you we can bind them, but that puts pressure on the lungs and makes everything work harder. Rayden never let me bind mine."

"They don't hurt."

"Sure they don't," Kung Lao said. "But if they start to, Siro can help you find some of the merchants that sell palliatives in the morning. He knows the city better than I do."

"Are you going to bed?" Taja asked, sensing the shift in Kung Lao's focus.

Kung Lao spent a moment rubbing his eyes. When he lowered them, he let his fists drop to settle atop his thighs. She watched him roll his reddened eyes up to the ceiling, roaming back and forth as though there were stories written up there. His head tilted, letting his gaze drift to the walls, to the shelves. He looked half-dead. "I think I'll meditate for a while," he said finally. "Do you want me to help you find your room?"

"I think I'll stay down here a while longer." Oddly enough, she did feel better. The realization that her ribs weren't broken after all had given her morale an unexpected boost. "Even if I went up, I probably wouldn't be able to sleep. I'll straighten things up down here, keep myself busy until I pass out."

"Well, when you do decide to head up, your room is the last door on the left," Kung Lao said. "I'll make up your bed for you so you don't have to search for the linens. Are you sure you don't want me to show you the way?"

"I'm fine. Go meditate."

Again she saw the crinkle of a smile at the corners of his eyes. She'd seen the full version of it when he'd left her in Siro's clutches to run off with Jen, though she'd been more occupied at the time by the fact that Jen's bodyguard was actively trying to rip her hair off her scalp. She wondered if she'd ever see it again. Kung Lao had religion and his god and whatever inspiration was in either of those, but Jen had taken things with her when she died, selfish in the way all dying people were selfish. Taja suspected that the joy that had invented that smile had been the first thing to go. "Good night," he said.

"G'night."

She watched him move off, quiet as a ghost, to ascend the stairs for the second time that night. She kept her ears trained for his movement, and while there was the occasional squeak of an old floorboard, his footfalls proved to be nearly as silent as her own.

When she no longer sensed movement, she stood and followed in his wake. The upstairs corridor was cloaked in shadow, haphazardly illuminated by ambient city light and a strong moon out the window at the end of the hall. There were a handful too many doors to accurately guess which one was Siro's or Kung Lao's, so she instead went straight for her own, mentally logging escape routes and noisy floorboards as she passed.

Her room ended up being well-furnished despite some evidence of minor looting, filled with quality oaken furniture and frothing with lace. Kung Lao had set candles in two places close to the freshly-made bed; the flame scattered a little on the wick but continued to shine a steady halo of light over the floor as she passed.

On another day Taja would've cased the room for valuables, but with a suddenness that startled her, her resolve ran dry. It was late and her body felt like three or four separate pieces held together with cobwebs, and not a single one of those pieces was up to shenanigans.

She threw herself face-first on the bed. She spent a stupid clumsy moment toeing off her boots, ignoring the grains of sand they scattered on the floor, and peeled off her leather bracers without moving her face from the pillow. The sheets smelled heavenly and felt soft as a spring breeze against her scraped cheek. Tomorrow she could suss out the quality and see if it was anything worth bartering, but for now she pulled the sheet over her until she was cocooned against the darkness.

Fifteen seconds later she was out of bed again, snagging the chair by the window and moving it in front of the door. There were two latches on the frame that she engaged and two latches she then disengaged from the shutters over the room's eastern window. It took some doing, but when she finally managed to push the swollen wood off the frame, the fresh air that rolled in dazzled her: exotic spices and wood smoke and the metallic tang of craftsman working their forges late at night.

Taja leaned out the window as far as she dared with her sore ribs, closing her eyes, filling her body with the scents and sounds of an unfamiliar place. When the novelty wore off and she was starting to shiver from the interchange of warm and cool air, she closed the window back up and latched it.

This time she took more care putting herself to bed, stripping off her outer layer until she was down to her underclothes. She smelled but there wasn't a lot she could do about it until they refilled the water tubs downstairs. This time the linens slid sinfully along her bare skin, and she barely had time to jimmy her dagger under her pillow before she crashed headlong into sleep.

The room was blazing with afternoon sunlight the next time she rose to consciousness. Unwilling to make herself useful just yet, Taja dozed on and off again for an hour before an empty stomach and a full bladder worked together to pry her out of bed.

She limped across the room and unlatched the door to come across a pitcher of water and a mug set against the wall to her left, along with a generous helping of fresh fruit and bread on a platter. The doors in the hallway were now open save for one; when she surreptitiously tried to open it, she found that it was shut and locked, and that, all in all, was the last sign either of them saw of Kung Lao for three days.

* * *

When they were kids, Taja believed Dion stole the sun every day and put it back because she got bored with the darkness. Taja had made a game of predicting where she'd end up in ten years, but her favorite was 'marrying the son of a rich merchant' because she liked seeing the fond exasperation in Dion's eyes whenever she said it. _Don't get your teeth stuck in some pampered city boy,_ Dion would retort every time. _Just take a chunk out of him and run. Don't tie yourself down to one when you can have them all._

There weren't a lot of opportunities to study herself growing up, but after a certain point Taja felt fairly sure she'd gotten beautiful. Or at least pretty enough to do something with it if all else failed, which had more or less been what Dion had meant. Beauty was a tool like a lockpick or a cutpurse ring. It was something that was handed out to you by chance at birth, which made the whole thing impersonal. You had to use it before you lost it – and in Taja's line of work, that usually ended up being sooner rather than later.

Zhu Zhin was an explosion of smells and colors and people and goods and opportunities so vast they made her breathless. Taja stayed in the Trading Post that first day, keeping a low profile, because for the first time in a long time she wasn't sure which tool in her toolkit to use. She'd seen enough bared tail to know that prostitution flew here, but the idea had always been distasteful to her. If nothing else, resorting to it too early would get in the way of establishing a more respectable business later, and more and more she was beginning to warm to the idea of a business. Or… something. There was a word for it. Something simple but with roots. Easy to pull up in a hurry, but sturdy enough to withstand a few storms.

Driven by habits nearly as old as she was, she ended up stepping out the second day just to see what she was in for. Instead of following her training and pinpointing the easiest marks, she found herself instead standing in the middle of the street, floating between a scarf-seller and a bread cart, a little nauseated with the intensity of it all. There was something here that she couldn't put her finger on and there was too much it. It was tantalizing and inexplicable and it was _too much_.

She retreated to the Post and was forced to tolerate Siro's backsass clear up past dinner. "I'd expected you to come back with at least a half a cart's worth of goods by now," he said again, cheeks stretched to accommodate his pastry. "Losing your touch?"

"Yeah, and just where would I store the loot, genius?" Taja snapped, nettled by the entire exchange. "Any halfway decent thief can pick the locks on this place with a feather. No way. If I'm going to do anything here, it'll be under some better fortification, thanks very much."

"You do any stealing here and they'll lock you up." To his credit, Siro imparted this a bit more seriously. He then swallowed and added, more off-handedly, "That's if the law catches you first. Most of the justice in Zhu Zhin is martial. You get caught by the wrong people, they will take your head off your neck before they turn you in."

"That's if they can catch me." The longer she spoke to him, the more his accent maddened her. For all intents and purposes Siro spoke the language fluently, but the occasional stutters in syntax and the depth of the twang likely came courtesy of immigration. _From where_ was really the question, especially since he claimed to have been at Jen's side since birth. "And what's with the whole assumption that I'm out to steal something? You don't know what I can do. You have no idea what I have planned."

"Just a hunch."

"Well you can cram your hunch in your back door. And I don't need you sticking your nose into my business, so you can go ahead and cram that up there too."

Siro only grinned. There were still bruises on his face, but there was evidence he'd washed up earlier that day. The grime from his skin was gone and his hair was gathered in a neat, tiny tail at his neck. He looked tired but survivably so. Probably a lot better than she looked. "Have it your way, but try not to get into trouble," Siro said. "If it's a scuffle we can back you up, but the law… you don't know the lay of this town yet. You might find yourself biting off more than you can chew."

"I don't need you to fight my battles for me. And the only one biting off more than he can chew is you. Didn't living with the baron teach you any table manners at all?"

She saw the shadow on his face, saw it slide off just as quickly. He was as mercurial as Kung Lao was temperate – quick to anger, quick to laugh again when the storm passed. "Living with the baron," Siro said, and deliberately took off an extra-large bite of his pastry in full view, "taught me to play pretty with the sharks. If you want to keep all your fingers, little thief, you best learn what prey to pick off and what's too big for you to swallow."

That evening she sat up on the balcony and watched the stars blink under shifting clouds. For a second, balanced on a rail between light and dark, she couldn't figure out if the crowd below or the stars up above were further out of reach. Fingers or no fingers.

* * *

"Kung Lao."

The platter started to slide and she steadied it. Taja braced her shoulder against the door, tucking her elbow so she didn't knock everything off it as she leaned closer to the wood. "Kung Lao," she called again.

Silence. Her arms were going numb. Taja gave up and set the platter down on the floor, catching a grape before it rolled off. She tossed it in her mouth and addressed the door again. There was a lock on the outside that she could pick in her sleep, but if Kung Lao was anywhere near as intelligent as she thought he might be, he would've barred the door from the inside to counter that.

She pressed an ear against the wood. A minute of listening brought up nothing she could use. Breathing didn't make a lot of noise. Neither did being dead. She didn't hear any weeping, which was good but not particularly helpful. She knew by virtue of experience that someone was in there, but beyond that she was coming up empty.

Kung Lao was Good People. Taja prided herself in seeing the worst in everyone because that generally kept thieves alive, but her body also ran on instinct and cold facts, and Kung Lao checked out with both of those. It was the only reason she did what she did next, which was to set aside her first impulse to walk away and indulge her maybe-fifth impulse to care. "Kung Lao, you have to eat," she said. "I know it hurts, but you can't lock yourself in there and expect everything to just go away."

Not a peep. There was actually a chance he could be dead. He'd been injured coming into Zhu Zhin too. There could have been some internal bleeding that none of them had caught, and now he was dead and stinking on the floor instead of sitting on Jen's bed and ignoring her. Taja didn't know which one she preferred. One was bad news but the other pissed her off really kind of a lot. "Fine," she said. "You want to sit in there and starve, it's your business. I'm going to leave it out here. Sulk, eat, whatever, do what you want."

She stopped long enough to push the platter closer to the wall by his door so no one would trip on it, then stormed down the hall, face burning. At least she'd done it while Siro was out. She'd given damns before, pretty sizeable damns, but never in front of an audience, and never when she thought that her effort was going to be thrown back in her face.

* * *

She spent that afternoon expanding her knowledge of the city as promised, crossing rooftops and skulking in alleys in order to research the color of the local grunge. So far her search had turned up nothing atypical for a large city, with the exception perhaps of the sheer volume of specialty shops. There was variety and you didn't have to hike too far to get to it. She found one cart selling several dozen shades of silk scarves, another selling at least twenty different bottles of essences, half of which containing herbs she'd never heard of. There were carts for beaded jewelry and another for silver, which she steered clear of when she saw the size of the blade kept behind the counter. Shoes, tailoring services, meat markets, fish mongers.

In all her searches, nowhere did Taja find a general shop with an assortment of all the above, which made sense considering the space constraints of the crowded market. Taja realized with dawning excitement that they were perhaps one of the few places in the city that _weren't_ bound by space constraints. The Post was enormous and it was located in an ideal location: close enough to the heart of the city to be convenient, but off towards the boundaries enough to enable a quick escape if things went south. Defensible, sturdy, spacious, expedient.

Thoughts occupied, Taja headed slowly back via the main streets, keeping half an eye out for any unwelcome familiar faces. There was no one she recognized. It truly was fresh territory. She'd weighed her options and come out on top for once in her life, and from here on out the choice was hers to make.

She reached the Trading Post and used the key to get in, just for fun. It felt ceremonial and a little stupid. She could scale the back wall one-handed and drunk. Once she was inside and the door was locked again, she tossed the key on the nearest surface and headed up to her room to grab a nap. Her explorations had been fruitful and her body was still sore from fighting someone else's battle, so she figured she'd earned some midday shuteye.

She followed the curve of the staircase, blinking in the splashes of sunlight thrown down from the narrow windows along the wall, and with no particularly warning, sprawled in the window well at the top and munching through one of their apples, there was Rayden, lord of thunder and protector of Earth.

Taja's first introduction to Rayden had been in chains and underwear, which wasn't something she was planning on telling her hypothetical future children. Her official story was that his disguise hadn't fooled her for even a second, that she had stolen a thunderbolt right from his pocket and jabbed him in the ass with it for good measure.

Except the truth was that Rayden had looked through the prison bars at the baron's mansion at her, and it hadn't mattered that he was dressed as a beggar. In that moment his dark eyes had become the sole center of the world, and she'd both loved and hated him. The destruction of wind, the terrifying depth of water. The beauty of heat lightning in a summer storm. It'd been enough to bring her to her knees, but she'd kept standing because she _hadn't_ been lowly, she hadn't been just a common criminal enslaved by the baron. The god Rayden, with his freedom and his immortality and his smirk and his storms, had needed something from _her,_ and even if just for those few minutes, that had made her mighty.

Taja slowly came up the last step to the landing and folded her arms, frowning at him. Rayden took another bite of the apple and beamed back at her. "What," she said.

"What," he echoed. His hair was piercingly white with sunlight, enough to obscure his expression. Then she blinked and it shifted, just enough, and when the spots cleared from her vision Taja could see his face again. "Hell of a greeting."

"What are you doing here?"

"Visiting," Rayden said. He polished off the apple, set the core aside, and immediately pulled another one from the sleeve of his robe to get to work on that one as well.

Suspicious, Taja eased her back against the opposite wall. As far as gods went Rayden looked human enough. His face had an abundance of affable creases, with laugh lines around his mouth and crows feet at the corners of his eyes. His eyes were nearly as dark as Kung Lao's, ordinary enough at a glance, but a closer look revealed a strange, candle-esque glow that faded and rekindled between blinks. "Does Kung Lao know you're here?" Taja asked, after a minute of silence.

"I doubt it."

"You're his god, aren't you? Why are you out here when you could be talking to him?"

"Why indeed."

She already wanted to hit him. If Siro was obnoxious and Kung Lao was moody, Rayden was infuriating in all the ways only people with vast amount of power that answered to no one could be.

Then she felt something within her shift, like a cloud over the sun, and just as abruptly her anger was replaced by something that made her want to both weep with relief and crouch screaming in the dark. She steeled herself and waited it out, refusing to back down even when Rayden looked over at her with a knowing glint in his merry expression. _It's god fear,_ Kung Lao had told her that first day, when they'd stopped by the river to bind what hurt. _They've known you since before you were born. It's your body's way of telling you that this isn't something you've seen before._ "Kung Lao's in his girlfriend's room," she said. "I assume that's why you're here."

"I know where he is," Rayden said. "Always."

"Great." She turned her back and headed to her room. "Go ahead and flash yourself out when you get bored searching for the person whose location you already know. Always."

Rayden didn't answer her. Taja let herself in, closed the door, locked it securely, and when she turned around Rayden was sitting on her window will. "I noticed you casing Zhu Zhin," Rayden said. "What do you think? What are your thoughts?"

Her heart was thudding again. "Ripe for the picking," she snapped. "Is 'Thunder Pervert' one of your titles along with 'Protector of Earthrealm'?"

"No, but feel free to add it to my list of pet names, along with 'Ray Burn' and 'Sir Shock a Lot," Rayden said. "You don't seem to be picking. You seem to be researching."

"You don't just grab the closest fruit on the vine. You wait until you find a good one and then make your move."

"There have been plenty of good ones. It seems to me that you're not particularly in the market for picking."

"Think what you want." She slung her day-bag onto her bed and pointedly turned her back on him, and on second thought stripped off her shirt to change because why not. He already had seen her naked in all the ways that counted. Flesh didn't mean a lot when someone knew you down to the last drop of blood.

"You seem to be adapting to the situation well."

"That's what thieves do. Adapt." A shirt to sleep in. She rummaged, found one in the bottom drawer of the bureau that didn't belong to her. Nothing in this room belonged to her, but that too was a familiar feeling. "Sorry, but is there a point to this? I'd like to go back to that part in my day where there isn't a nosy god getting in my business."

"I see you tried to feed and water Kung Lao today."

She froze but only for a second. Sleep pants. She'd slept nude before but somehow this seemed neither the time or place. "Kung Lao turns inward to grieve," Rayden said. "It's a… quirk of his I never convinced him to grow out of. He meditates deeply enough to block out reality. It's his escape."

"So?"

"So I thought you'd like to know that your efforts weren't unappreciated. Just unobserved."

She didn't reply, but something hot and sharp was suddenly in her chest and she didn't like it. She shoved shut the drawer and went to the next one. "The problem with suppressing that grief and anger, of course, is that it all has to come out eventually," Rayden said. "And unfortunately, Kung Lao is a fighter, so more often than not that frustration turns to resentment and eventually to violence. Both to himself and to others."

"And? What's that got to do with me?"

"I don't know. Maybe nothing, if you're lucky."

Taja found sleep pants. She dropped trou and slid into them ( _silk,_ god, what it must have been like to live like—) and startled herself by feeling angry again. Not so much because she was being manipulated, but because it was so _obvious_ he was manipulating her, which meant either he couldn't be bothered to be convincing or didn't think she was intelligent enough to know when her strings were being yanked. "Yeah, sorry, but I don't buy for even a second that Kung Lao would hurt me in a tantrum," she said. "But nice try. What do you _want?_ Why don't you just come out and say it instead of loitering around here like a drunk old pervert?"

He only chuckled, which didn't surprise her. Everything she said that was designed to make him angry only seemed to amuse him. "You know, he never really completely explained this 'Mortal Kombat' thing," Taja said, grudging curiosity overtaking irritation as she watched him. "He said he trained all his life to fight for you. That you chose him out of everyone else to protect Earth. If he won your battle, why can't you just leave him alone? Hasn't he already done what he set out to do?"

"If evil would lay down and die, yes, that'd be the ideal," Rayden said. "Unfortunately Shao Khan isn't a dog you can train."

"So he's stuck fighting for you forever?"

"He fights for Earthrealm, as its Champion."

"And then what? When does he get to rest?"

Rayden tilted his head. His amusement had shifted shades, still warm but with an edge. "When he dies."

"See, no, that's where you lose me," Taja said. "Even pretending that isn't the most bullshit deal in the universe, there's no way you're that cold about it. If it were just about him fighting in that tournament, you'd be long gone by now. But you keep popping up. I mean yeah, he needed your help with the whole decapitation thing, but when he was trying to find his girlfriend? That wasn't life-threatening. You could've let him handle that himself."

"I have a vested interest in Kung Lao's well-being, which necessitates keeping a handle on all aspects of his life. Even the mundane."

"What are you even doing here? He's not in danger. He's hurt but he's not bleeding. Look, it's obvious what you want me to do," Taja said. "The question is why it matters. He'll get over it on his own. He'll still fight for you. That's what you want, right? To make sure he keeps fighting?"

Rayden didn't have a lot of expression on his face. "Oh god, wait, hold on," Taja said, dread suddenly sweeping through her. "He's not your son or anything like that, is he? Because that's a cliché worse than death. Let me guess. You had him with some mortal woman in a valley somewhere and turned her into a mermaid after she was done. I'm going to be some kind of mortal errand girl because you couldn't keep your godliness in your pants."

Rayden remained utterly still a moment. If she dared to guess, she would've sworn he was puzzled.

Then it suddenly gave way to a brisk, merry grin. " _What_ ," she said.

"You have a very colorful imagination," he said. "No, as it happens. He's a hundred percent Earthrealm born and bred. He couldn't be its Champion otherwise."

"But you love him, and his parents are dead, so he might as well be your kid. Why don't you just tell him? I'm willing to bet it'll mean more from you than anything I can say to him. I mean, I barely even know him."

"See, and now I'm going to disappoint you again, because gods don't do love either," Rayden said. "There is a need for him and that's where it ends. And coincidentally, so does this conversation."

"Yeah, I would've been just fine with that happening like ten minutes ago," Taja said. "Next time knock. Or better yet, find someone else to haunt."

She turned to her bed and Rayden was sitting on the edge of it. "I will say this," Rayden said, and once again the levity was gone. "The compassion of a friend can be more effective than a balm when it comes to healing injuries. Right now, you have the power to offer him something that no one else can. Not even me."

She had a smartass comment on deck, but suddenly it seemed crass. She kept her own council instead, clenching her jaw, busying herself by taking off her cuffs and ring and setting them on the table.

When she turned back to tell him to get the hell out, he'd had already done it.

* * *

Kung Lao's door was still closed that evening. Taja considered picking the lock just to make a point, then headed outside and scaled up the side of the house to make a different point. It was as laughably easy as she'd predicted. If she'd wanted to make yet another point she might've come up with the platter of food from that morning, but the world had a way of punishing hubris.

She dropped into his open window with the last slant of evening sunlight, chewing on the last bit of the roll she'd pilfered from the kitchen. She'd prepared herself for a certain amount of weirdness, like Kung Lao sprawled across the bed with his nose buried in one of Jen's shirts or collapsed in the middle of an ocean of soggy candles.

What greeted her was infinitely creepier. With a stray scarf on the floor by her bureau and the sheets rumpled on her bed, Jen's room at first glance looked like she'd just stepped out for an errand. The illusion was shattered when Taja realized that the room had been fanatically, compulsively cleaned down to the last speck of dust. The desk, chest of drawers, and the wardrobe had been polished to a gleam. The drapes over her four-poster bed had been shaken out and arranged in perfect symmetry. The baseboards had been washed, the dirt scraped out from between the floorboards, the walls wiped down. There wasn't a fleck of grunge anywhere in the room.

It was easily the most terrifying thing Taja had ever seen in her life. There'd been no sound of Kung Lao moving furniture, no way for him to get the water and rags and cleaning supplies to do this level of cleaning. For that matter, where were the supplies? A quick check turned up nothing. He might as well have pulled the tools straight from his ass and put them right back up there again for how impossible it all was.

She stood by the window for several minutes, paralyzed, until something at the corner of her eye caught her attention. Kung Lao was sitting cross-legged on the floor, propped against the door, looking like he hadn't moved in days. His eyes were on her.

Taja stared back at him. She'd assume he was awake, but his body was motionless, eyes lidded so that they were nearly shut. For a moment she wondered if she'd been right after all, that Rayden had been screwing with her and had chosen a new champion from the tavern down the street while Kung Lao quietly rotted in his dead girlfriend's room, but after a while Kung Lao's eyelashes fluttered in a blink.

The discovery that he wasn't dead should've been a relief. Here in the makeshift shrine of Jen's room, alone with a man who was more or less a stranger, Taja was suddenly overcome by a wave of dread. The feeling only intensified when she saw Kung Lao's dark eyes follow her hand as she pushed her hair out of her face. Tracking her without bothering to shift position, like he was a sleepy lion and she was a snack that'd fortuitously popped up out of the grass.

For the first time – way too late – Taja realized that she'd overestimated herself. Because while it was true Kung Lao was Good People, he'd also been specifically chosen by the god of Earthrealm to Kill People. Worse yet, Rayden had implied he'd been chosen for his temperament, which meant that whatever personality he'd shown her so far was secondary to the one that an ancient vengeful thunder god found appealing.

Then Kung Lao's eyes slid shut again. Taja's first instinct was to go out the window and her second instinct was to grab the scarf and thengo out the window. It looked like it'd get some coin and Jen was too dead to do it justice anyway. It'd been stupid to stay here. Stupid to trust two strange men, stupid to make promises to someone else's god. Stupid to…

Looking at him, Taja suddenly forgot the exact reasons why it was stupid. Instead she found herself wondering if this was the sort of thing Dion had been warning her about her entire her life. Right here, in front of her eyes, was a sample of what sacrificing everything got you. Kung Lao had trained until his bones had broken to win a pan-dimensional martial arts championship to save Earth, and his reward was holing up in his dead girlfriend's bedroom, reeking of cleanser, with a thief who'd steal everything down to the color of his memories if she could swing it.

 _That's what caring gets you,_ Dion had said. _That's what sacrifice is. Losing everything, then getting locked up for wanting some of that back._

Taja's feet moved on their own. There was a creak under her bare heel that she solved by shifting her weight; her next footfalls were silent as she finished her approach. Kung Lao was still leaning cross-legged against the door, not reacting at all to the closing distance.

Hardly believing herself, feeling like she was operating outside of her own body, Taja knelt in front of him and pulled on his shoulder. At first he didn't budge. She lifted her other hand and took a grip under his arms. Using her legs for leverage, she shifted her weight sideways. He didn't resist, but he didn't help her either.

Fine. Upping the ante, Taja pulled him down sideways along the door until he'd be forced to make the choice either to shift his lower body to stay upright or lay his entire body down on the floor.

After a long, awkward moment, Kung Lao chose the former. With his help, Taja slid him away from the door until he was resting on the wall instead. Without bothering to stand, she reached up for the handle, unlocked it, and pulled the door open towards her.

The tray was still resting against the baseboards outside the room. Still balanced on her heels, Taja shifted her weight to her toes so she could grab the edge of it, sliding it towards her across the threshold. The scrape it made was rude in the silence. Once she'd gotten it in all the way, she closed the door again as a courtesy to them both. She pointedly didn't lock it, and Kung Lao made no move to do it himself.

Her legs were burning from the stupid acrobatics she'd been doing to keep herself on her toes. Figuring he wouldn't probably killed her by now if that was his aim, Taja finally gave up and plopped herself down onto her rear, crossing her legs as she cased the supplies from this morning. The cheese was warm, but a nibble on a corner proved it was still edible. The dry heat of Zhuzhin had preserved the bread's freshness. The real test would be the fruit. Taja popped a wrinkled berry into her mouth and chewed experimentally, eyes rolled toward the ceiling as she considered. A little drier than it'd been that morning, but still edible. Still sweet.

Satisfied, she caught the tankard of water on the way up as she rocked to her feet, then walked over to the window to empty it out. It hit the dust below with a muted splatter. When she returned, she refilled the tankard with the comparatively fresher water from the covered pitcher, sparing a thumb to mop the spare drops up from the side and popping it in her mouth to wet her whistle.

Kung Lao eyes were open and trained on her when she finally turned back to him. Supplies checked out, Taja returned to her cross-legged position, propped her elbows on her knees, and said, without any particular preamble, "I know what you're trying to do."

Kung Lao didn't blink. "But it's not going to work," Taja said. "Here's why. Cleaning her room, organizing her stuff, getting your affairs in order… it feels like closure, but it isn't. You're not any more settled in your zen or whatever than you were two days ago, and Jen doesn't care if her lacy unmentionables are folded into cranes or flowers or whatever it is monks do with their girlfriend's underwear. It doesn't change anything. She's still dead and you're still alone."

Kung Lao didn't respond, but his eyes did slide away. She couldn't tell where they settled, but as long as they weren't on her, she was more than happy to let him go. Less eye contact made the brutality easier. "If I know your type like I think I do, you've probably got a knife hidden somewhere on you," she said. "Except you know Rayden is never going to let you commit suicide like that, so you've held off on using it until you get too delirious from hunger and dehydration to do anything but fall on it. Accidentally."

Kung Lao said nothing to support nor deny that. "Which would be a good plan, except for one detail," Taja said. "It's not going to work out like you think it will. Not because you'll miss or because Rayden or I will stop you, but because you and I don't go to the same places people like Jen do."

Kung Lao didn't address this either, but his body had grown still. To keep herself distracted as she spoke, Taja fed herself another berry, which actually turned out to be a great idea because the berries as a whole were much better than she'd expected. She knew she was supposed to be feeding the needy, but she'd never been one for martyrdom and thieves got hungry too. "Jen was pure. And I mean, I kind of say that with a grimace because yeah, it's easy to be pure when you're raised with all the food and clothes and blankets you ever want, but the fact is, Jen was pure and wholesome and good and you and I… it's not like that. Is it? I mean, we've seen blood. You've spilled it, and I've spilled it. I don't know how much you've spilled, but if it's anywhere near the amount I think it is, I think you know exactly what I'm talking about."

All at once Taja began to feel something in the air whisper a warning to her. When she glanced down, the hairs on both of her arms had lifted.

For the first time since the beginning of her lecture, she felt the urge to flee flaring up in her again. Maybe this was all Kung Lao needed to complete his shrine: a handful of wrinkled berries and a dismembered thief. She wondered which god would appreciate that kind of offering. Probably all of them.

… except neither she nor Kung Lao were dead yet, and despite all the lessons Dion had tried to hammer into her head, Taja realized she wanted to keep it that way. It'd been her problem since she was a kid: wanting things. It was one thing to take something for free. It was another thing to work for it, because then it wasn't free, was it. It cost you something. "Your grand plan of dying and joining her in some kind of golden afterlife is bullshit, Kung Lao," she said. "You can starve yourself all you want. And yeah, maybe you stop hurting once you die. Or maybe you get sent to some kind of fiery nightmare realm, because who the hell knows what happens to us when we die. But either way, no matter what philosophy you have, no matter what god you worship, you and I both know that neither of us is going to be in the same place as Jen again. Not just because we've dropped the ball, but because people like her deserve a place all to themselves that's as bright as they are. And they don't need us there to be happy. We're the ones who need them."

The slant of the afternoon sun was getting steep. Soon there'd be more shadows in the room than light. Done with her lesson, Taja waited both of them out, daylight and temple warrior, watching to see which gave first. If he'd fight like Rayden said he would, or if he'd flee further into himself, far enough where she couldn't reach.

Then, all at once, the pent-up energy in the room flickered out like a candle. Kung Lao's breath hitched as his chest expanded sharply, first once and then three times, quick and quiet like hiccups. His gaze was still on the window, but there was a glassy sheen over his eyes that reflected the light.

Taja lifted the tankard of water from the tray and brought it to his lips. "Drink."

Kung Lao didn't move. Taja reached out and took his chin, pulling his face over towards her. She pressed the lip of the tankard against his lips again. "Drink," she said. "Or everything she did for you means nothing."

For a long, excruciating minute, Kung Lao continued to lean there, tankard against his lips, looking out the window.

Then his lips parted slightly. Not giving him a chance to change his mind, Taja tipped the water in. The column of his neck jumped as he swallowed. She tipped again, and he swallowed that mouthful down too.

When he was halfway done she said, "Take it," and after another pause, he did, fingers fumbling a bit as they wrapped around the body of the tankard. When he'd finished draining it, she took it from him and refilled it, then handed it back. He drank that down too.

Leaving the half-empty pitcher on the floor, Taja stood, taking the rest of the tray with her. Kung Lao didn't look like he was in a hurry to eat and she wasn't in a hurry to give him more opportunity to shove her efforts in her face. _There,_ she thought. _I watered him. The rest he's got to do himself, so don't go looking at me._

There was a rattle outside of the window that was maybe thunder or maybe someone banging into the garbage receptacles in the alley. For a second, studying Kung Lao, Taja felt a strange wave of pity. She'd been a thief and a liar her entire life and probably wouldn't have anything but her name to take with her to her grave, but at the end of the day, nobody could tell her what to do with her life except herself. She could choose to die tomorrow or next week and nothing would change in the world because she was gone. Kung Lao might live to be a thousand years old, but not a single one of those days would be spent deciding his own fate. He was carrying a life sentence out in the dusty armpit of Zhu Zhin, holding up the sky so that a million other people could live out their lives in his place underneath it. "We're here, even if she's not," Taja said. "That's got to be enough for now. If it isn't, fine. Do something about it. But sitting here wallowing in the past doesn't change anything. Either die already or get over it already."

Kung Lao flexed his fingers slowly around the tankard. He didn't look at her. "Either way," Taja said, and something caught in her throat, hot and painful, "stop dragging the rest of us into it."

Giving the pitcher a wide berth so she didn't accidentally knock it over, Taja strode out the door and on second thought slammed it shut behind her.

Out in the hallway, she leaned against the wall for a minute and closed her eyes, trying to catch her breath. She waited for the sound of the latch to be thrown, but the door remained silent.

When she'd collected herself, she left down the hall to take the tray to the kitchen area.

She was agitated enough to want to burn some of it off on the town, but knew herself well enough that it'd spell trouble if she did. Taja's anger wasn't the slow, dangerous burn Dion's was – the productive kind that traded immediate satisfaction for later, longer-lasting results. Taja's anger was quick and ugly and petty and didn't last long enough to cover the guilt she felt after she took her revenge, which usually ended up being disproportionate to the crime anyway.

So she stayed inside and took her frustration out on things that needed her wrath, like the grime on the future display counter and the scorch marks on the walls of the kitchen. There wasn't much she could do for the latter, but after some vengeful scrubbing she discovered that she could coax the shades of black down into grey, which helped. If she could get enough of them off, she could look into introducing some wood stain to the paneling around the room. Anything to buff out the oppressive memory haunting the place. Anything to make it hers.

When the moon had risen outside and her anger could no longer sustain her, she shoved the tools and buckets into a corner, rinsed her hands in their standing water basin, and snagged a last rind of cheese before heading up to her room.

She did wash up more thoroughly once she was in her own space, using her personal basin in the corner to scrub the grit and sweat off her body before sliding into her pajamas. Figuring some fresh air was probably in order, she swiped her snack back off the nightstand and let herself out onto her balcony, letting the brisk snap in the night air clear her head. The fence on the side of the property was high enough to prohibit passersby to take peeks at the ground level, but if she craned her neck just right, she could see around the side of the adjacent building and down onto the busy streets outside their property.

Hoping she was at least semi-scandalous, Taja ate her cheese and dangled her legs off the railing, switching between casing the night life and trying to catch glimpses of starlight through the scattered clouds.

When she was nearly finished and her body was just starting to think that bed was a better idea than a railing, movement caught the corner of her eye. Sleepy, she craned her neck the other way, still chewing.

At first she thought she'd imagined it. Then, ever so slightly, Jen's sheer curtain fluttered as if from a breeze. The glow that had been ever-present in the room for the past three days suddenly grew brighter.

Taja took another absent bite, not taking her eyes off the curtain. It fluttered again, then parted. A candle came out first, dancing low in the holder; a moment later Kung Lao emerged from behind it.

It'd make sense for Kung Lao to be able to see her, considering the master balcony wasn't too far from Jen's window well, but then again, Taja was wearing dark pajamas and the candlelight was right in his eyes. She wasn't quite childish enough to duck out of sight, but she did stop moving, letting the darkness camouflage her as she waited to see what he would do.

The breeze teased the flame, nearly putting it out half a dozen times, but each time it rallied, sinking deeper into the pool of wax. The light barely touched the dark tangle of Kung Lao's hair, but the flame reflected strongly in his eyes, setting up shifting patterns of gold that nearly obscured the brown. For a strange moment, looking at them, Taja was reminded of Rayden's flickering eyes on the stairwell: dark enough to get lost in, bright enough to light the way down.

 _Beautiful kid,_ she thought idly, swallowing her last mouthful of cheese and wondering if she should intervene before he started burning off parts of his face. She wasn't naive enough not to figure a little self-harm had probably gone on during the last three days, but being forced to watch Kung Lao perform ritual mutilation wasn't in her contract.

Just as she was looking around for something to knock the candle out of his hand, Kung Lao leaned forward suddenly, coming dangerously close to the flame. Taja tensed, opening her mouth to shout, but just before his nose touched it, he lifted his face a fraction and blew it out instead. The window and the room behind him plunged into shadow.

He left the candle, wick still smoking, out on the windowsill, then drew his head and shoulders back inside, sliding the curtain closed.

Taja sat there a while, feeling the oppression in the renewed darkness. When her ass started to get numb, she finished her snack, swung her legs off the rail, and headed to bed. It looked like it was going to storm anyway.


End file.
